


hello, recovered

by soldierly



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierly/pseuds/soldierly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's never been good at losing people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hello, recovered

Steve dreams about someone named Bucky.

Tony knows this because when he's coming up from his workshop at three, four, five in the morning, sometimes Steve will be passed out in the living room, the TV still on and flickering over him, and he'll be saying Bucky's name, over and over. Tony never wakes him up; he remembers from some bullshit psychology high school course that waking a person from nightmares is an idiot's mercy. Or he thinks he does. He spent a lot of his senior year mostly (almost entirely) drunk and/or hungover.

Steve doesn't know he knows, and Tony keeps it that way. He's never been good at handling emotional crises, and Steve's dreams definitely count as one.

The day Steve loses a little girl also counts.

His face flashes dark and hateful and then his eyes are blown wide with his heart in his throat, and Tony can see him rip in half from the inside out as she falls, and no one, not even Captain America, can save her.

When Tony comes up from the basement that night, Steve is sitting at the kitchen's smooth marble island, and he doesn't even look up when Tony shuffles to the coffeemaker. Tony's uncharacteristically silent and also uncharacteristically unsure, until Steve mutters, "She fell."

Tony sifts through his repertoire of responses, none of them appropriate, and finally settles on, "I know, big guy."

Steve makes a noise, raw and aching. "Bucky – "

"You don't have to," Tony says, mostly because he can't handle hearing about it, not like this.

"He fell too," Steve murmurs, staring with glazed eyes at his folded hands. "I couldn't reach him."

Tony comes around to drop on the stool next to his, and Steve leans into him, shoulder to shoulder. "Can't save 'em all," Tony says. His hand drifts absently to the back of Steve's neck. He's always been that little bit of a pessimist, and he's not about to shut it off, not when he knows Steve needs to hear this. "Lose one, save a hundred. With style, if you're lucky."

Steve exhales, pushes into Tony's hand. "It's not – "

"Good enough?"

"Yeah."

Tony half-shrugs, one side of his mouth sliding grimly up. "It's all we've got."


End file.
